Although Clark encountered no American Indians along the Yellowstone, he crossed paths with them many times and paid close attention to signs of their presence. The day before reaching Pompeys Pillar, he visited a very large ceremonial lodge built on an island the year before. William Clark wrote on July 24, 1806, that it was council in form, 60 feet in diameter at its base, built of 20 poles, each pole 2 1/2 feet in circumference, ten inches in diameter, and 45 feet long, built in the form of a lodge and covered with bushes. In the lodge he observed a cedar bush sticking up on the opposite side of the lodge fronting the door, with a buffalo head on one side and on the other several sticks bent and stuck in the ground. He also saw a stuffed buffalo skin suspended from the center with the back down, while the tops of the poles were decorated with eagle and calumet eagle feathers and several curious pieces of wood bent in circular form with sticks across them in the form of a griddle hung on top of the lodge poles, others in the form of a large stump.